Google is bringing all its messaging and communication apps such as Google Meet, Google Chat, Gmail, and Duo under one central leadership led by Javier Soltero who is the company’s VP and GM for G-Suite. Soltero will in turn be under the leadership team of Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Platforms, and Ecosystems.
This does not mean that all communication products will be integrated into one single app – not yet, but it does mean that using these products will be much easier and rewarding in their distinctive functions. The integration is not imminent because “we believe people make choices around the products that they use for specific purposes,” Soltero said.
Soltero joined Google Inc. in October 2019, and he had been in the tech industry nearly all his life. He was instrumental in developing the Acompli email app which was rebranded as Outlook after Microsoft acquired it. Since joining Google, he was also instrumental in the transitioning of Hangouts Video to the new Google Meet and also Hangouts Chat to Google Chat for enterprise solutions. He said the transition was borne out of the need to modernize the products to meet current and future user needs.
While Facebook has announced plans to integrate Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp under a single platform, Google does not have such plans with its communication products at the moment. Soltero is only more concerned with driving engagement around the use of the products and making them more intuitive for specific missions. He said it would be irresponsible to alter the way these products work at the moment given that they currently shape how people communicate and do business.
Since Soltero will remain on the cloud team and still work under Lockheimer, the latter has himself undertaken more products which include overseeing Android and Chrome OS. To this end, Lockheimer thinks it would be nice to consider integrating Chrome OS with G-Suite apps having considered how Google Due blends perfectly with the Android OS.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing that there are multiple communications applications if they’re for a different purpose,” Lockheimer said. “But we’re looking forward now, in a way that has a much more coherent vision.”
By making the use and operability of Google products more coherent, the tech giant will prove itself as efficient and user-friendly. This will remove the confusion that people have with using all the products for different related purposes. “The issue that people tend to have is their ability to see across these apps and see themselves as a Duo user and a Meet user and a Gmail user and so forth,” Soltero stated.
Source: theverge.com
